Footprints of Sand in the Hallways
by LeonaWriter
Summary: When he was younger, Riku would sneak out, sometimes in the middle of the night and sometimes in the middle of the day, and his parents wouldn't notice aside from the muddy sand he'd occasionally trace through the halls.


Riku was five the first time he climbed out of his ground room bedroom window, bare feet finding ways to climb down what to an adult would have been a simple case of let go and jump, brush your bum off at the bottom. He was quiet, and he snuck around outside with ease.

The Islands' main town looked different in the nighttime. Darker. The lights that _were_ on made him think of the twinkling on a Christmas tree, or like the stars he could see when he looked up, which added a bit to some of the magic. The dark didn't scare him. There was a bit of light, even now.

No one was around to tell him what to do, so he walked, purposefully, down to the beach. Some of the older kids would go out to the islands beyond the water, but he wasn't old enough yet, and when he'd brought the idea up, his parents had been confused.

"But there's nothing for you out there," his father had said. "It's just a couple of islands the kids play on. You've got bigger things in your future."

"You know, his mother had said to him, to his father, not Riku himself, "I don't think their parents really care for them. _Anything_ could happen."

Riku went all the way down to the water, dipping his feet into the wet sand and letting the waves lap around his ankles for a good long while, listening to the gulls screeching as he did so, before he decided he'd had enough and would like to go back home.

He found the place he'd clambered down from, but small as he was, he couldn't figure out how to get back up. Instead, he found the back door, which was only held closed by a latch and therefore often forgotten about, and walked in that way, completely forgetting about his damp, sandy feet trailing footprints all over the immaculate floors and carpets.

They don't realise he was gone, and he wakes up to the maid being told off for not making sure the floors were clean, and silently promises to make sure he either wears shoes, or cleans his feet next time.

He doesn't promise not to do it again, though, and especially not when, a few outings later, he meets the fisherman's boy, although this is the middle of the day and he's keeping out of everyone's way - or he thought he was, until he was whacked across the shoulder with a wooden sword.

"You're supposed to be waiting for me to find you and then ambush me, not just sit there- hey, are you okay? I didn't hit you too hard, did I?"

Riku was rubbing his shoulder, and he was sure there'd be a bruise there in a few hours, but he was too busy shaking his head and wondering if he should stay, or run now.

"Nah. I'm Riku, and I'm not really meant to be here, but where I'm meant to be is _boring_. Who're you?"

"Eh? So you weren't even playing? I'm Sora!"

Sora had darker skin, probably from being out in the sun more, and brown hair, and blue eyes, and a plaster across his cheek and another across his knee, like getting hurt was just normal for him. Riku wondered, wistfully, how that felt.

"Can I... join in?"

Sora tilts his head to one side, and then shrugs, beaming.

"Sure! We'll have to find you a sword, though. Or - I could just give you mine until you can get one of yours!"

He takes the sword, and the wood still feels warm in his hand, and when he gets introduced to the others he realises - _this is what friendship must be._ He doesn't care when he's lectured over how many bruises he'd gotten, because he's a fast learner, and if he's fast with his books then he's even faster with fighting, and cares even less when he's told that those were the wrong sort to be messing around with, what with all that roughhousing, because he'd made friends, friends all of his own, and his heart feels warm, like it's reaching out to something out there, and not quite so alone or penned in any more.

His parents stop telling him what not to do after a few years. Only a few months after he'd first found his friends, he'd taken on a great _secret_, an important _task_, and it was a good job they didn't ask, because no one knew why he trained harder than the others, and he'd never tell them, either.

More and more he starts to feel imprisoned by his own home, the walls becoming more like the bars of a cage, as he grows older. He can't wait each day, each week, until he can next be free, knowing that he won't be missed, hating and despising them for that very reason.

Sora and Kairi were the only thing left of the islands that he'd miss, if he left, which he promised himself that he would. Sora, who was the only person who was still keeping up with him even halfway after he'd surpassed everyone else. Kairi, who'd boss him around and inspire him and jump in and hit him and Sora both when they were being total idiots - Kairi, who he joked with as they worked on the raft, and shared stories with, and was one of the few - if not only - people his parents would admit to other people that their son was friends with. _The daughter of the mayor, you know_, they'd say, completely leaving out the part where she'd arrived on the night of a meteor shower, or how she'd come from another world she said she knew nothing about.

Still. Once again, he was heading out into the dark, and once in a while, he'd dip his feet into the cold, shallow waters that led on to something far deeper.

For the longest time, it was easy to believe he didn't care, and then when he could admit to caring that he'd sent his entire home world into the darkness, he didn't have the time to care, because there was Sora to deal with, to look after while he slept, and then there was Namine, and DiZ, and Mickey, and his own darkness seeping out, bit by bit making itself visible like telltale footprints in the halls that he couldn't just wipe away, only hide.

Sora was, in a way, lucky. Sora got to sleep in, like always. Sora's family forgot, while he slept, that there was anything wrong at all.

Riku had checked in on Sora many a time, over the year. Far fewer were the times he'd taken a darkness corridor to Destiny Islands itself for more than just keeping an eye on a puppet with broken strings.

Kairi was doing well, even if Sora wasn't looking out for her, and that was all that mattered. All that was important.

He never went home, though. It wasn't home to a boy in a black coat who had destroyed this all once, who had nearly killed the two who were closest to him... certainly not to one who would not even be recognisable, even if they still remembered him.

Finding the way home was both easier and harder than he'd ever thought it would be - easier, because he knew the way so well, harder, because the route belonged to someone else, in another time. Someone who hadn't been through all of the things Riku had been through, for sure.

He's alone as he goes down the path to the front door, shoes still trailing bits of mud even though the bright, warm sunlight had dried the rest of him off after his dunking into the sea, and when he realises that they'd replaced the locks, he feels like a burglar at bringing out Way to the Dawn to open his own front door. Like he was using the keyblade for a lesser duty that he could have used lockpicks for, but knowing his parents, they'd have alarm systems that'd go off if he tried with anything less.

He crept into his room, a safe haven of _Riku_ in the midst of all that wasn't, a room that didn't really feel as much like him any more as it used to, but was still undoubtedly, undeniably his.

His mother, all pale hair and pale eyes and pale skin in a creamy dress that used to make him think of how she liked to dress up elegantly and parade herself around like a timeless debutant but now only served to remind him of Naminé, a girl who wasn't supposed to have existed, rather like Roxas, but had anyway, and wasn't supposed to have felt, but he'd started doubting that somewhere along the way, too.

Only now, he saw his mother, her elegant dress crumpled slightly, her hair frizzed as though she'd been drinking a little too much, and he was stood, rooted to the spot, as he didn't know what else to _do_.

She looked up at a sound he'd made, and stared as though she couldn't quite believe he wasn't an illusion.

She wasn't like Sora, who threw himself at you and wept when he thought you'd been dead, or who pulled at your face when you'd been gone. Riku's family had never been like Sora's.

Instead she stood, carefully, with poise gained from dance classes, and walked slowly, hesitantly toward him.

He shook, not knowing what to say, what to do, how to react, when she put her hand on his cheek.

"You've come _home_," she was saying. "I always knew you would. I _did_. My boy's come _home_ to me."

She held on to him, and his arms didn't know what to do - it only felt like hours ago he was asking Sora how he'd face everyone, not much longer ago when Kairi held onto him to stop him from leaving.

He wondered what she'd say about the muddy tracks in the hall.

...

AN: Inspired by my own headcanons as well as a select few fics I've read with similar ideas on the matter, I fully realise this is very likely quite a bit AU to canon in various ways, including the ages at the beginning.


End file.
